


the 13th struggle

by dotmatrices



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-15 10:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9231488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotmatrices/pseuds/dotmatrices
Summary: Following the events of the original Kingdom Hearts, Roxas joins Organization XIII. Upon the loss of a friend, he is sent to embark upon a grand journey where he is forced to question the true nature of his enemies, friends, and himself.





	1. Eternal Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> For the purposes of this story, every game that chronologically takes place after the original Kingdom Hearts is considered non-canon. This fic may take some story elements from post-KH1 games, but the actual events of those games are assumed to have never happened unless stated otherwise.

Riku awoke alone, in a realm that he could not call his own. His surroundings were barren and lifeless, dominated by seemingly endless rows of sand fading gradually into a vast sea. In a different place, he’d call it a beach, but the moonlit visage of the dead shoreline felt like it deserved a word much more sinister. He certainly didn’t want to be here. That said, Riku - considering what he’d done to get here - felt like he deserved to be. He deserved to be right here, ruminating on the sins of his past.

It was only here in the solitude of his failure that he let himself shed tears. Loneliness was the only feeling strong enough to shatter his pride and let him cry. Certainly not in front of Kairi, and absolutely not in front of Sora. The King was gone as well, lost in the chaotic rift that took them to this hell in the first place. For once, he was finally, truly alone. Or so he thought.

“You are not who I expected,” a voice from behind him said.

Riku turned around. The voice’s owner was a large, cloaked man, one that towered over Riku’s defeated, hunched figure. The cloaked man edged closer to Riku, as if to threaten him. Riku stood up, tears still falling from his eyes, and stared the man directly in his. The cloaked man drew his weapon: a red, vibrating blade of energy. Riku, now openly challenged to a duel, did nothing. He stood, motionless, still looking the cloaked man in his eyes. The cloaked man showed his first sign of emotion: Surprise. As if almost disappointed that Riku wasn’t affected by his taunt, the cloaked man went one step further.

He took his blade of light and swung directly at Riku’s face, with a force and with speed that would undoubtedly kill him. _This is it_ , the cloaked man thought. _He must react to this._

The cloaked man stopped his blade directly before it reached Riku’s face. He stood, just as motionless - and emotionless - as he had before. Finally, the cloaked man spoke again. “Do you care if you live or die?” he asked.

Riku looked at the cloaked man, and uttered the first word he had in what felt like years: “No."

The cloaked man looked at Riku, smiling. “Then you are exactly what I need,” the man said, turning around, opening a dark portal to the right of him. “There lies your gateway to freedom.” The man slowly marched into the portal himself, disappearing entirely.

Riku looked at the portal, and thought of the world he would be passing up if he said no, continually haunted by the question that’s dominated his mind since he got here. _How am I going to make up for what I’ve done?,_ he pondered.

He couldn’t find the answer, but if he knew anything for sure, the answer most certainly did not lie in wandering a dreary, desolate hellscape for the rest of his days. And with that, he departed into the portal.

\---

An alarm rang. It rang the same time it usually has for the last six months, with the accuracy and timeliness one would expect from a machine, and every time, Roxas groaned scornfully, with the bitterness and lethargy one would expect from a teenage boy. He very reluctantly arose from his tangled mess of bedsheets and moved to find his coat. An elementary task, considering that it was just about the only thing in his dwelling that wasn’t the same uniform shade of grey. As soon as Roxas put on his coat, the alarm shut off. Roxas figured it was some sort of magical trigger put in by the powers that be to get him out of bed, or perhaps that was the only reason he had to explain why slamming the alarm with his fists didn’t turn it off. Regardless, Roxas marched out of his room, heading to the Grey Area.

The Grey Area doubled as a lounge and often as a briefing room for Roxas and the rest of the organization. At least, it used to, as many of the Grey Area’s most frequent visitors had recently been dispatched to Castle Oblivion. In recent weeks, the only person who would be in the Grey Area was Saïx, awaiting to send Roxas on yet another assignment, but today, not even he was there, and Roxas was left only with a misty, clouded visage of another wing of the castle from the room’s window. Roxas was confused, initially, before a voice called from behind him.

“You’re off today, kiddo! So am I.”

Roxas whipped around. The voice came from Axel, sporting his usual smug grin. “What’s the occasion?” Roxas asked.

“The big boss has some business over at Castle Oblivion and Saïx is with him. I don’t really know what they’re doing over there, but who cares? We’re off the hook, let’s seize the day.” Axel slaps Roxas on the shoulder, motioning for him to come along. “I told your girlfriend, too. She should already be in Twilight Town," Axel says, holding back a laugh.

“She’s not my girlfriend!” Roxas snaps, embarrassed.

“Yeah, and my hair’s not red, either," Axel replies sarcastically, pointing to a strand of his clearly crimson-colored hair. Roxas groaned at Axel’s tease, while Axel himself continued chuckling. He summoned a corridor of darkness for the two to use, and they continued arguing about the nature of Roxas and his “girlfriend’s” relationship as they stepped through. The bickering continued as they stepped out the other side.

They arrived at the usual spot in Twilight Town, on a pedestrian street directly above a small market. The town always gave Roxas this vague sleepy feeling, with the sun above always trapped - quite fittingly - in a perpetual state of twilight. It was typically a quiet and peaceful place, with few inhabitants crossing its streets laden with orange brick. The walk from the corridor’s usual arrival spot to the clock tower was short, but Axel’s teasing made the trip feel like centuries. Axel poking fun at Roxas certainly wasn’t new, but back when Roxas and his “girlfriend” embarked on their first mission together, he made the grave strategic mistake of describing her as “really cute” to Axel after the fact. Roxas had only been working with the Organization for a few weeks at the time, so he was unaware that giving any sort of incriminating information that could be used to roast oneself to Axel was a bad idea. Roxas regrets not knowing better at the time. Axel, evidently, rejoices.

The two make the quick, questionably-legal ascent up the clock tower, and are met with their prior subject of conversation at the top. “What took you guys so long?” she asks. She too, was sporting a black coat, with a single stick of half-eaten sea salt ice cream in one hand, and two complete ones - presumably for her comrades - in the other.

“Good morning to you too, Xion," Axel says, sarcastically. “And to answer your question, me and Roxas were having a talk.”

“A torture session," Roxas corrects.

Roxas and Axel sit on opposite sides of her, as usual. Xion doesn’t bother to inquire what the subject of her friends’ delay even was, as Roxas and Axel getting in detailed arguments over complete trivialities was an event that had essentially become routine. It was just another repeated ritual shared between the three, just as eating sea-salt ice cream and sitting atop clock towers was.

The trio cycle through their typical list of conversation topics, ranging from the surprisingly profound to the disgustingly juvenile. About an hour passes, one not reflected by Twilight Town’s frozen sky. The conversation has died down just as the trio began to finish their ice cream. Finally, a curious Xion pipes up.

“So what do you think they’re doing in Castle Oblivion?” she asks.

“Yeah, Axel, don’t they tell you this stuff? Aren’t you in the know with the upper circle or whatever?” Roxas asks.

Axel breaks down in laughter, nearly dropping the dripping piece of his ice cream to plummet to the ground below. “You’re giving me way too much credit," Axel says. “They don’t tell me nearly as much as you think they do. They really don’t tell me a thing unless they need me to do some work for them, and even then it’s on a strict need-to-know basis. I’m not ‘in the know’ of anything.”

The other two seem almost surprised, as if their idea of Axel being a cool, high-ranking member of the organization who dealt with classified information was shattered. Then again, they probably only developed such an idea because it made them feel cooler for hanging out with him.

“Listen, I don’t know why we’re off today, but it’s like I said - I don’t care. Any excuse to hang out with the world’s best munchkins without Saïx up my ass about something -” Axel was interrupted by a buzz in his coat pocket. “You’ve gotta be kidding me," Axel mutters, bitterly standing up and taking his communicator out of his pocket.

“Is that him?” Xion asks.

“Probably," Axel says, as he answers the call. Axel briefly converses with a deep-voiced man on the other side, and then he ends the call, angrily shoving the communicator back into his pocket. “Well, guys, sorry, but they want me at Castle Oblivion for some reason. Didn’t tell me why.”

Roxas and Xion’s expressions change from content to disappointed immediately. Axel hugs Xion and headlocks Roxas on his way off the clock tower. “I’ll leave you two alone," Axel says, winking briefly at Roxas. Roxas makes an obscene gesture to Axel as he leaves, but Axel’s gone before he sees it, to Roxas’ dismay.

“What were you two bickering about this time?” Xion asks, noticing Roxas’ attempted vulgar message to Axel.

“Nothing important. He’s just being annoying, like usual," Roxas says, clearly unwilling to give a straight answer.

Xion’s suspicions of this particular argument being less trivial than usual are only given more credence by Roxas trying to assure her that it’s not. Usually Roxas and Axel are quick to go into detail about why the other is wrong about something, whether it be the particulars of how to properly wear the Organization coat, or whether Roxas’ angry face is more or less intimidating than a newborn kitten, or some other subject equally as unimportant, but Roxas denying an explanation was definitely cause for more investigation.

“I feel like whatever it was, it was probably both important _and_ unusual," Xion says, poking Roxas, desperately trying to get him to crack and tell her.

Roxas, equally desperately trying to fend off the dastardly assaults of her index finger, barely musters a response. “Keep doing that and you’ll never find out!”

The two exchange blows for a little longer before Xion finally gives up, and very lightly slaps Roxas on the cheek in protest of her defeat. Tired, Xion lays her head on Roxas’ shoulder, eyes still fixated on the eternal sunset. Roxas begins to doze off, but Xion reawakens him with a question.

“So _nobody’s_ at the castle?” Xion asks.

“Yeah," Roxas sleepily replies. “From the way Axel was talking, it seemed like even Xemnas was gone. Must be something pretty important happening in Castle Oblivion.”

Xion’s face turns to one of mischievous contemplation, and she looks at Roxas. He notices. “That expression is never good," he says, dreading what Xion has in mind.

“L-Listen, just… hear me out, ok?” Xion says, embarrassed that Roxas can read her intentions so easily.

“I’m listening," Roxas says, anxiously anticipating Xion’s explanation.

Xion’s expression of mischief fades into one of longing. She looks away from Roxas back to the sunset, looking noticeably more somber than before. “What does the Organization do?” she asks.

“Well, they send us on missions and we collect hearts -”

“No, Roxas. That’s what _we_ do," Xion says, cutting him off. “What does the Organization do? While we’re out there collecting hearts? Why did Xemnas create the Organization in the first place?” Her voice seems laden with vague frustration. Much like Axel said, the Organization was never forthcoming with straight answers, and even the nature of Roxas’ and Xion’s existence had still gone largely unexplained to them.

Xion turns from the sunset to look at Roxas directly in his eyes. “Do you care about me?” she asks.

Roxas is caught completely off guard by the question, as it was noticeably different in nature from the rhetorical ones she was asking before. He scrambles to answer it quickly. “Yeah! Of course I do!” he stammers, almost feeling as if he must defend himself.

Xion, realizing she may have thrown Roxas for a loop, quickly jumps to clarify. “Sorry. I didn’t to suggest that you didn’t," she says. “I care about you too. A lot. And Axel, too. And that’s something I _feel_. It’s a feeling.” Xion looks away from Roxas, staring instead at the distant town below.

“But they tell us we’re not supposed to have feelings. That we don’t have hearts. They go on and on about being empty, and they talk about Kingdom Hearts like it’s supposed to make us whole again, like we’re finally going to be _real_ people, but…” Xion trails off, before clenching her fists, becoming noticeably angrier. “I already feel like I’m real. I feel like you’re real! I’m not just pretending to be happy, or sad, or angry.”

Xion motions to three kids down below the clock tower. Roxas and Xion had seen them before, wandering Twilight Town, loudly discussing the details of their antics wherever they went. Even as high up as the Clock Tower was, the trio at the bottom could still vaguely be heard, as their sentiments of joy and laughter echoed through the town’s otherwise quiet air. “Who’s to say that they aren’t pretending to feel? How would you - or anyone - ever really know? Their expressions of happiness, sadness, and anger look like ours. Why are _we_ different?” Xion asks, rhetorically. She clenches her fists, recalling an apparently infuriating memory. “But they refuse to answer that question, or any question, for that matter! Xigbar patronizes me, Saïx dismisses me, I haven’t even gotten the chance to speak to Xemnas since I was born, and above all of that, even Axel leaves us in the dark! And he’s supposed to be our friend!” Xion exclaims.

A tear almost escapes her eye before she swiftly wipes it away. She takes a deep breath to regain her composure, and Roxas moves to console her. The two lock hands for a brief moment before she continues. “Everything is classified. Everything is secret. But I want to know why we were brought into existence to live this specific life, and why we weren’t put in another one. I want to know if there is a life outside of the grey walls and black coats. There _must_ be," Xion says, pointing again to the jubilant kids below, who live an existence likely completely oblivious to the Organization’s existence.

“And if they won’t tell us,” Xion said, her frustrations mounting. “Then I don’t want to work for them. I don’t need Kingdom Hearts. I don’t even want it. I already feel like a person. They say they need _us_ to collect the hearts to make _them_ whole, but we shouldn’t do anything for them if they won’t give us the respect or the information we deserve!” Xion continues, almost yelling now. “They treat us like we’ve all got to go on this quest, like we’ve got to work day in and day out to prove we deserve to exist, but who are they to say we don’t? I deserve to exist!”

Xion’s final statement seems to almost freeze the air around them. Dead silence persists for a solid minute as the two ruminate on the speech. “Sorry," Xion says, fearing that she sounded incoherent.

“It’s… fine," Roxas says, surprised at the normally-docile Xion’s sudden conviction. The two remain dead silent, as Xion’s speech left them both to reflect over the events that transpired over the last six months. “You’re right, by the way. About everything. I understand how you feel about it, but… where were you going with that? Are you going to leave?” Roxas asks.

“No," Xion quickly replies. “I’m going to find the truth.”

Roxas appears confused as to what she means. Xion takes a deep breath. Upon looking at her closely, Roxas gets the idea that whatever she’s about to say, she’s thought about quite a bit. “The Castle Archives. I see lots of members - Vexen especially - go in and out of there all of the time. We’re allowed in the outer section, but remember the inner section that’s off-limits to us? That only Vexen and Saïx are allowed into?” Xion asks. Roxas nods, so she promptly continues. “I peered inside once. It’s twice as tall as the outer section, and it had research documents strewn all over the tables and floor. But there was another door, even further past that, on the second floor. “Xemnas came out of it,” she says, with her face deathly grim.

“Xemnas caught you in there?!” Roxas exclaims.

“No, no, I ran! Really, really fast…” Xion says, reflecting on the terrifying memory. “But if there’s an answer, _any_ answer to what’s really going on here, what they’re really up to, or what _we_ really are, it’s in there," Xion says.

The two sit silent on the roof, still as the world’s unmoving sun. They knew that this discussion alone could get them in a world of punishment with the Organization. They had never seen anyone above Axel’s rank get into a real fight to give it their all, but the stories of the power of Saïx, Xigbar, and especially Xemnas proved terrifying enough to keep most of the lower Organization members in line. Breaking into Xemnas’ private section of the library would be grounds for… well, Roxas didn’t know, but he surely didn’t want to find out.

“You’re saying we break in?” Roxas asks, clearly terrified of the idea.

“I’m saying we stop waiting for answers and find them ourselves," Xion says.

\---

Axel arrived in Castle Oblivion’s main hall. The design of the labyrinth was so uniform one could mistake it for nearly any other hall in the entire complex. Any given room was nearly all white, and almost frighteningly sterile. Saïx patiently awaits him there, looking stoic as usual.

“You said this was urgent," Axel says, clearly bitter after leaving the clock tower.

Saïx promptly ignores Axel’s sharp tone. “Marluxia captured Sora,” he says.

Axel’s expression flips from annoyed to surprised. Most of the older members, including Axel, knew the tale of Sora’s victory over Ansem seven months prior. “Lord” Xemnas seemed to have an ego the size of all the worlds, and feared very little, but he always spoke of Sora as if he was the only exception. A fourteen-year-old boy powerful enough to take down Ansem must truly have strength to behold. All Organization members were instructed to never engage him alone if they were to cross paths with him.

That said, since Ansem’s defeat, Sora’s location had been all but unknown. Xemnas desired him in the Organization’s hands since his triumph against Ansem, presumably to keep him from meddling with any more plans.

“Just Marluxia?” Axel asks skeptically, as the thought of Marluxia doing what Xemnas’ counterpart couldn’t seemed impossible.

“Him and the others stationed here,” Saïx replied. “They were surprisingly quick and coordinated. They teamed up and captured him only a week after his entry.”

Axel seemed impressed, but only for a moment. His bitterness came back as he addressed the reason he arrived here in the first place. “So did you bring me here just to tell me that?” Axel asks.

As Axel poses that question, another Organization member approaches from the door behind Saïx. Axel looks behind Saïx to see Zexion, with his usual book in hand. Zexion looks to Saïx, as if awaiting instructions.

“Show him,” Saïx says.

Zexion makes some sort of hand motion after reading some incomprehensible line from his book. Right then, directly to Axel’s right side, a puff of dark-colored smoke spontaneously appears. From it emerges a figure that looks more and more like a person. After a few moments, the smoke dissipates, leaving a frighteningly accurate depiction of a human being. In particular, a teenage girl, sporting a pink dress and red hair. The image is truly life-like, but standing absolutely still, as if it was a statue. Axel gets an eerie feeling just looking at it. “Who the hell is this?” Axel asks.

“This is one of Sora’s comrades,” Saïx replies. “Her name is Kairi. You are to go to her world - Destiny Islands - and capture her. She is a princess of heart, but she is no wielder. It should prove easy.”

Axel wondered deeply why the Organization would even bother sending one of their members to capture some teenage girl, even if Sora knew her. They had no more need to bait Sora into doing anything, as he was already captured. Axel, however, didn’t ask why, as he knew the Organization well enough to know that he wouldn’t get an answer. Instead, he sighs, preparing to summon his corridor. “Is that my only objective?” he asks.

“Yes," Saïx says. He dismisses Zexion back to wherever in the castle he emerged from, and the illusion of Kairi dissipates.  

Axel summons his corridor, and on any other day, he’d begin to march through it obediently. But this time, right before he crosses the boundary, he thinks to ask something. “Hey, Saïx.”

Saïx was already making his way out. Upon hearing Axel’s call, even his stoic face fades to mirror Axel’s annoyed expression. “What,” he says coldly.

Hearing such a disinterested, blunt response almost made Axel walk through the portal and not say anything else, but he felt that his question was worth asking. “Do you remember when we first joined, all those years back?” Axel says, his expression becoming more somber. “Do you remember when the conversations we had were more than just business sometimes?”

The query triggers something deep in Saïx, reluctant as he was to show it. “No,” he lies.

Axel proceeds to make his trip through the portal. “I figured,” he mutters, before he’s whisked away.

\---

Kairi arrived on the beach of the miniature island alone, as she had been doing almost every other day for months. The moon was high in the sky already, and most wouldn’t bother to make the raft-based journey from the residential isle to go to what was effectively an old children’s playground in the dead of night. Kairi knew that. Since the incident seven months ago, for all intents and purposes her life returned to an almost suffocating normalcy. High school trotted along as usual, and Kairi’s friends grew apart from her, as did new ones appear. It would have been an acceptable existence for most. It was one that Kairi just couldn’t accept.

Her usual thrice-weekly pilgrimage to the miniature island was only known about by select people in her circle of friends. When asked about the reasons for her trip, Kairi would completely refuse to provide an answer. Her friends often theorized the trip was to visit some boy that they weren’t aware of. Kairi sincerely wished that was why she was here.

The _real_ reason, was quite frankly - at least to Kairi - much more pathetic. She was remembering. She was coping. She was trying - desperately - to refuse to accept the new life she had been given. The nostalgia for the times on the island long past, for the silly playground duels, for watching Sora and Riku’s laughable testosterone driven (and personally satisfying) rivalry for her heart, for sitting upon the tree closest to the shore, and theorizing and wondering about the vast world beyond.

Having those memories - and the people in them - ripped away from her, replaced with a vast sea of almost tribal cliques and groups, bickering and fighting over even the most vapid trivialities, was truly painful. Kairi, too, was a reluctant participator in it all, just as any teenager is almost required to be. She couldn’t help but think that if Sora and Riku were still here, they’d be above the charade. Nobody had Riku’s sharp edge quite the same way, and nobody had Sora’s caring or adorable naïveté.

But they were both gone now.

Sometimes Kairi felt that she’d kill to get both of them - or even just one of them - back to her.

The miniature island had felt almost like hallowed ground ever since. Kairi made her way to the same tree she always used to sit on while gazing at the sunset, and in a fitting fashion, she sat in the same spot, staring at the emptiness of the night sky instead. She sat there for perhaps half an hour before she began to hear footsteps from the wood behind her.

Instantly, Kairi was overwhelmed by what felt like a million thoughts and feelings at once. _Who could that be? Why are they after me? How did they get there without me noticing? Can I still run?_ Her cacophony of panicked thoughts and questions was making it difficult to find answers to any of them. She rattled off a list of names in her head. There had been incidents before where some of her “friends” had followed her here uninvited, only to run immediately upon seeing the wrath of a scorned Kairi’s rage. It could be just some animal. Frighteningly, it could be one of her parents, likely displeased that their daughter is on an entirely different island than she’s supposed to be sleeping on in the middle of the night. All those thoughts are dashed when she hears a voice she’s never heard before.

“Well, I wouldn’t have been so annoyed by this mission if I knew you’d make it so easy for me,” Axel says. He looks almost delighted now that he’s sure this capture won’t take very long.

Kairi turns around. Upon seeing Axel’s relatively massive figure, she nearly trips and falls upon trying to vault off the tree. Axel’s size and eerily happy expression combined with his large, menacing black coat sent chills through Kairi’s body. She had never seen this man before in her life.

Axel decides it’d be best to cut to the chase. “Listen,” he says. “I’m not going to hurt you if I don’t have to. I just need you to come with me, and as long as you do it quietly I can guarantee your safety.”

Kairi, paralyzed with fear, says nothing, only backing away from Axel, ever so slowly.

“Or, perhaps, we could try the alternative?” Axel draws one of his flaming chakrams from thin air, as Kairi looks with bewilderment. She was at least assured that this stranger was an agent from the magical world, and not some seedy man involved in dark business from the islands. She wasn’t quite sure which one she would have preferred.

Regardless, she manages to stammer out a short statement. “W-Who are you?” she asks, trying and failing to sound intimidating.

“My name’s not really important,” Axel says. He summons a corridor of darkness, to Kairi’s further surprise, and motions for her to enter. “Again. If you come quietly you won’t be hurt. Last chance,” Axel says, starting to approach her.

Kairi begins to weigh her options. She might have had a chance fending off a mortal kidnapper, but the extent of the magical power of the man in front of her was wholly unknown. The island was so small, there was essentially nowhere to run. The feeling of utter dread Kairi got even gazing upon the dark portal was suffocating. Her heart began racing faster than it ever had in her life as she began to realize the futility of her situation. She had no choice in the matter but to hope for a miracle.

Then, as if to answer a prayer, time seems to stop, and Kairi’s mind takes her to a memory that she hadn’t recalled in over a decade. The memory was fuzzy and unclear, but extremely intense. All she can truly recall is a face. A kind face of a blue-haired woman that she couldn’t recall the name of. From that memory, she drew power. A flash of light erupted from Kairi’s person, bright enough to stun even Axel. Upon opening his eyes, his potential victim is now armed with a keyblade.

“They told me you weren’t a wielder!” Axel says, surprised, and slightly annoyed by Saïx’s false claim.

Kairi couldn’t provide a response, as she was just as surprised than Axel was. But seeing the opportunity to survive, she points her newly-found weapon at Axel. “Get away from me,” she says, now with a newfound sense of confidence and determination.

Axel’s annoyance fades to laughter upon hearing Kairi’s stern demand. “Well look at you!” he says, chuckling. “Think you’re a real threat now that you’ve been packing heat for the better part of five seconds, don’t you?” Axel taunts. “You’re not. But fortunately for you, with that thing,” Axel says, pointing to Kairi’s keyblade, “you’re more useful to me free than captured.”

At that, Axel walks through the portal he made, leaving Kairi alone on the small island. She doesn’t have the clarity of mind nor the desire to wonder why Axel spared her at the sight of her new keyblade. Instead, she has a thought:

_Maybe waiting isn’t good enough._


	2. What Lied Within

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xion reaches her breaking point - and so - embarks on a journey that will change everything.

Morning came. Or, at least, that’s what the alarm was signaling, as the pitch-black night sky outside the window certainly did not. Xion awakes post-nightmare in an erratic frenzy, frantically scrambling to shut it off. She manages to find the button to do so, but not without wildly thrashing around her sheets, leaving her panting in a tangled pile of the bed’s cheap fabrics. Breathing deeply, she stares blankly at the wall across from her, as she sat still, attempting to sort out what could only be described as a vague feeling of terror.

This was unusual for her, as unlike her comrades, Xion had always been more accustomed to the Organization’s strict routines. That may very well have been the problem this morning, as Xion’s frustrations with said routines began to grow ever larger as time passed. A week had gone by since her monologue of fury to Roxas atop the clock tower. The two had not discussed the plan about infiltrating the archives since, but Roxas was clearly not a fan of the idea. Xion remembers distinctly the look of fear on his face as she described the plan in further detail. It was fear for not only her, but himself as well.

It was at that moment Xion decided that she wouldn’t involve him in this. It was then she also decided that Axel, despite his and Xion’s supposed friendship, couldn’t be trusted about this either. But most of all, she decided then that she would do it. The idea of being caught and no doubt subsequently brutalized - or worse - by Xemnas himself was of no concern to her. As the days went by, the fear of death began to be slowly outmatched by the longing to understand herself. It was no coincidence that the nightmare would come today of all days; the day she decided that she’d break into the archives.

Xion, as she took her black coat and exited her room, attempted to sort out the scrambled memories from her nightmare. This would be far from the first time she’s attempted to do so. The dreams were recurring, appearing with different intensities and frequencies, but all gave her the same scattered, hazy feeling upon her awakening. Additionally, she would see the same faces, and hear the same names. There was one name in particular that appeared so often that it was very nearly burned into her mind.

“Sora,” she whispers to herself.

She didn’t know who this Sora was. His name was vaguely associated with a face in her head, but even his status as a “he” was more of a theory and less of a fact in Xion’s mind. She hadn’t told Roxas or Axel the specifics of her dreams, partially because there was very little specific about them, but mostly because she initially dismissed the dreams as the nightly hallucinations that she was told they are supposed to be. But she had never met any Sora, nor seen the face of the person in her dreams in her life. And to Xion, the Organization lying to her about the importance of her dreams made all too much sense.

The walk to the Grey Room took only a few minutes, but the perceived time felt amplified by several orders of magnitude as Xion made her way to it. The room was completely devoid of life, save for two exceptions standing at the front: Saïx, and Roxas.

“You’re late,” Saïx says with his usual empty voice, devoid of inflection.

Roxas says nothing, but appears surprised. Typically, he is the one that Saïx levels that accusation to.

“Sorry,” Xion says, slowly walking to the front of the room.

Saïx says nothing further on the matter. In the usual fashion, he briefs them on their mission for the day. “Swarms of Heartless have cropped up in Agrabah,” he says. “Simple heart collection. I trust you two will execute as usual.”

The two nod, and are dismissed through a corridor of darkness. The two end up around the city outskirts, and begin doing the standard procedures they usually take when on heart collection missions, but their usual banter in-between encounters is completely absent. Roxas eventually tries to drum up conversation.

“Well… it sure is hot out here, huh?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Xion coldly replies.

It was at this point Roxas knew something was wrong. Despite the fact that his conversation starter was absolutely dreadful, on a normal day Xion would have no doubt made fun of him for it on the spot. The obvious conclusion was that it was not a normal day.

“What’s wrong?” Roxas asks, a few heartless encounters later.

Xion knew she was often terrible at controlling her emotions, and Roxas had no doubt detected the empty dread that had been consistently portrayed by her face since she woke up that morning. Xion sighed. She knew that she couldn’t tell the truth, as it would either make Roxas desperately plea to either have her stop her mission, or to accompany her on it. And most of all, Xion knew that she cared about Roxas to the point where she would be unable to deny either one.

So, left with no other options, she lies. “I’m just tired,” she says.

Roxas detects the lie immediately. “It’s ok if you don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Xion knew there was no point in lying again. “I really don’t,” she says.

Roxas respects her wish, and the two barely exchange a word for the rest of the mission. That said, Roxas’ worry appears to grow stronger by the minute.

Roxas and Xion reopen the dark corridor as usual, but the typical sense of excited anticipation of their clock tower meeting that the two usually have upon leaving a mission is gone. When they emerge back into the Grey Room, Saïx stands before them.

“Satisfactory,” he says, looking to Roxas.

Roxas seemed almost surprised at the compliment, however devoid of genuine praise it was. He seemed even more surprised to see Saïx not look at Xion at all, and instead march away without saying as much as a word to her. “What about Xion?” Roxas asks.

Saïx stops in his tracks. “She did satisfactory as well,” he says, not even bothering to throw a glance back at the two. “But it’s not worthy of note, as unlike you, she usually does more than that,” Saïx continues, resuming his emotionless march to the Grey Room’s exit.

Roxas appears frustrated with Saïx’s dismissal of Xion, but upon looking at her, he sees that she doesn’t share the same conviction. As soon as Saïx is well out of earshot, Roxas mutters obscenities about him under his breath. He and Xion begin to walk to the hallway where Axel usually awaits him, but about half-way into the journey, Xion abruptly stops walking.

Roxas takes a moment to realize she’s halted. “Xion, why’d you st-”

He is promptly interrupted by Xion’s interjection. “I won’t be going to Twilight Town today.”

Roxas is stunned by her statement, standing still in complete bewilderment. The only member of the trio who is ever absent from the near-daily gatherings at the clock tower was Axel, and he is typically only gone due to unwanted obligations. The simple meetings at Twilight Town were more than a celebration of a hard day’s work. They were quite possibly the only escape the trio could have from the endless cycle of arduously working towards a goal that they didn’t fully understand. It was a group decision made by them and only them, it was the only activity that wasn’t instructed by a cold, disinterested Organization higher-up. It was the only time they could be with each other, isolated on a rooftop with only their closest confidants to keep them company. It was the only activity that truly made them feel - if not for only a few moments - like they had hearts.

Roxas had only existed for seven months. He had only been friends with Xion for five-and-a-half. Her absence from any portion of his day besides awakening and sleep was something that, at this point, felt like an impossibility. Remembering a time before she existed seemed just as unthinkable.

Finally regaining his composure after a long period of silence, Roxas responds. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you today,” he says, worry and dread deeply woven into his voice. “But I want you to promise me something.”

Xion stares to him with grim anticipation. “What is it?” she asks.

“Please don’t do anything you will regret.”

Time seemed to stop. Xion knew immediately that he had put the pieces together. Roxas had to have been thinking about their conversation about the archives raid incessantly in the week since they had it. Looking at Roxas’ face, and how he seemed to be holding back what felt like a tidal wave of anxiety about what would become of Xion if she was caught, she felt an excruciating pang of guilt. She was fearful of what she was going to do today, but until this very moment she remained determined to do it. It was only the thought of harming Roxas that could have possibly made that determination waver. For a moment, she considered changing her mind, feeling almost unable to bear the thought of how he would feel if she was discharged - or more likely killed - by the Organization. The emotional part of her mind is ravaged by the urge to cry, demanding that she change her mind for the sake of someone else’s well being. For the sake of someone else’s _heart._

_How can I feel guilty without a heart?_

The thought ripples through her head. The same questions she posed Roxas a week prior reappeared, seemingly yearning to be satiated by answers. Her frustration began to bubble to the surface once again, quickly outmatching the guilt in its hold on her. In an instant, the furious girl from the clock tower a week prior reinhabited Xion’s body once again, the fires of her fury forging an indomitable resolve. She had decided today was the day in advance. She wasn’t going to risk losing her determination by turning back to throw seven days of mental preparation away.

The flow of time seems to resume again, and she returns to Roxas’ question. _Will I regret this?_ she asks herself.

“I won’t,” she says, staring Roxas in the eyes.

Fate would soon decide if that statement was a lie.

\---

The witching hour had descended upon the Castle. If the usual schedules of the Organization’s members persisted, they would all be either sleeping or elsewhere upon this time. All was still except for the rapid, violent beating of Xion’s heart as she stepped through the archives’ door.

The archives were a sight to behold. It was a truly massive ring of bookshelves, laden with greyish-white book spines, reflecting the Organization’s typical monotonous uniformity. The sections of the library were only labeled by small bits of text plastered upon the bookshelves’ side, and there were sections that dealt with everything from star shards to cross-world travel. Tons of information about seemingly esoteric topics could be found in abundance, but what was notably missing was anything at all to do with the Organization itself. No encyclopedias about nobodies, records of the organization, and certainly no data about the nature of hearts.

The door to the inner section was located opposite the entrance on the other side of the archives’ ring, leaving Xion with a very long way to march to her destination. The bookshelves appeared to stretch for an eternity onward. The walk there was excruciating. As Xion’s feet meandered toward the other end of the library, her mind seemed to be convinced they were going to hell instead. At several points along the way she manages to startle herself with the sound of her own footsteps, as every few inches she moved towards the inner section door caused some new auditory hallucination to shoot another dose of terror through her body.

She had made it to the end. The door to the inner section was noticeably darker than the wall around it, but otherwise looked small and unassuming. As far as she knew from her prior experience at the door, there was no lock of any sort. It was always open. Perhaps, she thought, as a measure to sort the loyalists from traitors. If that was the case, her venture here was no doubt short-lived.

But for every ounce of terror, she paired with it two ounces of desire. Desire for the answers she had sought for so long, desire for a resolution to the dreams that haunted her, desire for an end to the monotony laden with schedules, checklists, and the literal grey emptiness surrounding it all, even the void of the door in front of her seemed preferable. And so, she made the step inside.

The inner complex was paradoxically larger than the outer one. It was smaller in diameter, but it’s height stretched to way beyond the perceived physical limits of the Castle’s size. There was no doubt some magical shenanigans at play, Xion presumed, but still could not help but marvel at the vastness of the tower’s innards before her. The room was littered with pillars that served as bookshelves themselves, and an elevator sat at the other end, the same one she saw Xemnas wander into that fateful day all that time ago.

But at the center of the room sat a peculiar piece of decoration. It was a desk with holographic research papers scattered about. Xion marched into the chamber proper as the black door closed behind her, it’s darkness now matching the shade of the inner sanctum’s walls. Upon further examination of the desk, it appeared to be none other than Vexen’s workplace. Xion moved closer to identify dozens of different documents, mostly research blueprints of Organization equipment. Vexen had written a litany of notes and descriptions upon the holographic displays, all portraying his typical arrogance and self-proclaimed wit.

His biases were clear. Xion took note of the insults thrown around. A few in particular stuck out. Zexion’s book was “A perfect weapon that doubles at helping you pretend you’re an intellectual.” Axel’s chakrams had safety note reading: “Unfortunately, contains measures to prevent setting user on fire.” Larxene’s daggers were described as “Only marginally less painful than hearing the wench whine for ages.” Of course, Vexen’s shield was a scientific marvel that commanded “masterful control of the elements” and “could only be devised by a true genius.” Frustratingly, an entry about Roxas and Xion’s Keyblade were mysteriously absent.

Vexen appeared to know his place. There was no such cutting commentary upon Saïx’s weapon, and the entry for Xemnas’ weapon seemed to be completely missing. Aside from the weapons, there was also noticeably more detailed blueprints of the Organization coats than there were in the normal library, along with some memos left for what Xion can only assume was Xemnas. Xion shoved some of the documents out of the way, sifting through to find memos of note. Several of them were surprisingly benign; lots of mentions of research schedules and passive-aggressive complaints about the goings-on at Castle Oblivion, nearly all of them had nothing of particular interest. All but one.

This particular memo was dug in very far beneath the others and was only a single sentence long. It was completely devoid of Vexen’s usual condescending tone.

_They have the girl. I dropped Marluxia’s reports in your chamber as you requested._

_The girl,_ Xion thought. Who could she possibly have been? Larxene and her were the only female Organization members. Whoever _the girl_ was must have been of great importance, as Vexen had no problem elaborating in detail about supposedly “classified” content and leaving memos about it strewn about his research desk. The trail had gone cold. There was nothing left around Vexen’s center workplace area of importance. It seemed that the information Xion was truly looking for lied beyond, up that ominous-looking elevator at the opposite end of the room. Xion maneuvered her way around Vexen’s mess and into the elevator.

The door automatically closed behind her. The elevator began its ascent, blocking out all other sound but the quiet and ominous whirr of the elevator as it went up. Xion began to ponder if Xemnas would be in there when she arrived. He was reportedly gone from the Castle, but given he never announces his leave or his arrival, he may very well have returned a while ago. _Not like it’d matter,_ Xion pondered. _If I’m this deep in already, he’d probably kill me before I had the chance to feel fear._

But even as every facet of the complex’s design seemed to be designed to impress and intimidate, the initial terror of arrival began to fade as the elevator arrived at Xemnas’ chamber. The brave soul from the clock tower had returned, coming back when it really mattered.

The door swung open. Surprisingly, compared to the prior two complexes, Xemnas’ private chamber was not nearly as vast. It was a relatively modest and normal room, save for it’s color palette appearing to be made up of nearly all black. At the center of this chamber, too, sat a table, one much more smaller and organized than Vexen. On it, it appeared, were the aforementioned reports from Marluxia. Upon recognizing them, Xion made her last dive into the secrets she was never meant to find.

_Lord Xemnas,_

_We’ve procured the “special nobody” you requested. It wasn’t nearly as hard as we thought. She’s extremely docile, and put up little to no resistance upon capture. She appears terrified - she hasn’t spoken a word since we captured her - but she’ll probably get the job done, and that’s what matters._

_I unfortunately still have some bad news. Finding Sora has proven more difficult than anticipated, and I must report that we haven’t made any progress whatsoever. He seems to be lost to wherever he went after defeating the Seeker. We will continue our search. Maybe the girl knows something._

_The girl_ was a “special nobody.” Xion pondered for a moment. Was _she_ the special nobody? The Organization did make a big deal about her arrival. But there was another word in the passage that triggered a flood of memories. _They know about Sora,_ Xion thought. The answers she was looking for were right under her nose for the first time for the first time in - quite literally - her entire life.

There were several other reports on the table. Xion began to sift through the remaining ones there.

_Lord Xemnas,_

_We’ve found him. He’s making quite a ruckus in the Castle, and he unfortunately was able to take the girl from us. I can assure you he has not yet escaped the Castle, and we are giving our best efforts to find him. I would like to politely request reinforcements._

The rest of that particular message was phrased in a way to suggest that Marluxia knew Xemnas would not be receptive of the idea of sending reinforcements at first Evidently, from the members that were consistently missing from the Castle in recent weeks, Xemnas must have eventually relented. The next - and final - message from Marluxia sat directly adjacent to the last.

_Lord Xemnas,_

_He’s under our control. He’s been fully subdued. We are awaiting further instructions as to what we are supposed to order the girl to do with him._

The message read on afterwards with mostly tangentially related reports about other ventures in the Castle, but Xion was once again drawn to the idea of _the girl._ At least she knew it couldn’t have been her now, but that question’s answer only birthed a thousand new questions.

There were a few other reports on the table, but Xion skimmed them enough to know they weren’t of terrible importance to her. Xion diverted her attention away from the table to ponder the information she learned. Frustratingly, the Organization was just as vague in writing as they were in speech. They could never name anything of importance, and they would always elaborate on irrelevant details but give unsatisfactory descriptions of major ones. Annoyed, Xion inspected the rest of Xemnas’ chamber to see if there was anything of note, and there didn’t seem to be. The bookshelves in this room were unsurprisingly locked.

She had done it. The trail had gone cold. The only way forward, it seemed, was back. Back through the elevator and the library, back out of the Castle, and into another world, far, far away.

\---

Xion had made sure to leave nothing disturbed as she left. She reordered Xemnas’ reports in the same uniform order they had been in when she arrived, and made her best attempt to authentically replicate Vexen’s mess. Days passed, and Xion - outwardly, at least - reverted back to her normal self. The sessions at the clock tower went on as they used to, and Roxas’ worry seemed to finally dissipate as the two returned back to their usual routine of juvenile, loving, and occasionally flirtatious banter. But it was all a mask this time. For when the missions would conclude and most were asleep, Xion was awake. Preparing mentally for the time where she would step through the portal to the next stop on her adventure: Castle Oblivion.

\---

Upon arrival at Oblivion, Xion almost immediately missed the excessively grandiose nature of the Castle that Never Was. Oblivion was almost soul-crushingly boring in comparison. If there was ever a variation in the appearance of its geography, it never went further than a slight variation of the room’s overall shape or a staircase placed in a slightly different position than before. The only way that Xion was able to maintain a sense of space were occasional magical holograms denoting the name of the room she was in, and in every case - just like the main castle - they were always inscribed in an overly complex font. They were about the only thing memorable in the whole complex.

The first room Xion entered with a major variation from the others was a large, circular chamber with three exits at its other end instead of the usual one or two that characterized the rest of the Castle. There was a single, large, elegant-looking door that dwarfed the others that sat at it’s sides. The other two doors to the left and right were marked with holographic names, but the center one seemed to have no such inscription.

 _It’d be like them to give the most important thing the most decoration_ , Xion thought. And so, she marched up the stairs to the center exit, and went through.

And she emerged, at a large, circular chamber with three exits at its other end instead of the usual one or two that characterized the rest of the castle. There was a single, large, elegant looking door that dwarfed the others that sat at it’s sides. The other two doors were marked with holographic names, but the center one seemed to have no such inscription-

 _This is the same room,_ Xion realized. _Of course._

Xion sincerely hoped that the other doors to the side did not have the same kind of Organization trickery. She chose the left door first, arbitrarily. It, to her relief, was not the same physics-defying magic trick of the center door, but it seemed as if it was just a different physics-defying magic trick nonetheless. It was an endless hallway, stretching forward seemingly forever in one direction. Small chambers, ones that appeared to be prison cells, lined the walls, uniformly sized and spaced from one another. Each cell had a door that doubled as it’s only window, and a small input device on each door, presumably for opening and closing them. Xion began to walk. For how long, she lost track, because the hallway never seemed to end and the door behind her began to seem as if it wasn’t getting any farther away.

A deep frustration began to set in. For how close to answers she seemed to be, even now that she was snooping around highly restricted areas, she seemed no closer to what she truly wanted to know. It was even more frustrating now, as her adventure thus far seemed to be almost intentionally teasing her with the idea of answers. And here she was, desperate animal chasing the carrot on the stick that seemed to be perpetually out of reach.

She slumped down next to one of the cells. _This is hopeless,_ she thought. She had to have been on this excursion for more than a few hours at this point, and the sense of vindication and hope she had at the beginning was finally starting to fade. There was no longer any fear, either. All that remained, it seemed, was a deep sense of dissatisfaction.

But a noise from the entrance would brutally wrest the fear in her heart back to the surface. It was discernable as a human - or nobody - voice. Panic ensued. Xion looked around the hallway, but it occurred to her that in a straight hallway that stretches on forever there is no crevice to hide inside.  Except, that is, the cells.

Xion leapt to her feet. She looked at the input device for the cell. It needed some sort of physical verification device. A device, unfortunately, Xion did not have. Terror began to set in. _This is the end of me,_ she thought. She was caught in a place with infinite space, but ironically, still could not escape the confines of her spot. A cruel way to end it all, indeed. If only someone had a key.

 _Wait a minute,_ Xion thought.

The solution to her problem seemed so blatantly obvious she almost submitted to the idea of certain death out of shame alone. In the end, her will to survive didn’t let her dwell on her moment of stupidity. She summoned her Keyblade, and promptly used it to bypass the lock on one of the cell doors. She scurried inside just in time for the room’s entrance to fling open, to reveal the owner of the voice she heard.

“God, quit crying for five seconds, you brat!”

There was only one nobody in the world who could create such indescribable suffering just with the sound of their shrill, insufferable voice. Being as she was in the cell, Xion was not looking the new arrival, but Larxene’s obnoxious exclamation alone made her want to burst out just to scowl at her on principle. More interestingly, however, Larxene seemed to be talking to someone else. In between Larxene’s incessant scoldings, there lied the faint sound of quiet whimpering in the background, only slightly audible from Xion’s cell. The sound of a cell door opening and closing was heard shortly after.

“This is bullshit,” mutters Larxene. “Why do I get assigned the baby-sitting work around here?!”

To Xion’s joy, with that statement, Larxene leaves the prison hallway. With her relative solitude restored, Xion un-glues herself from the wall of the cell she was hiding in and reopens her door. As it slides open, the whimpering grows slightly more intense in volume. Xion goes through her door follows the sound of the sobs to a cell closer to the entrance.

In it, is perhaps the most heartbreaking sight Xion will ever see. The owner of the uncontrollable weeps is a small, frail-looking figure, slumped on the ground in the corner of her cell. Her blonde hair is positioned in such a way that hides the whole of her face, but one does not need to see her entire visage to tell that she has been utterly broken by something. Her head lies buried in her hands, and she wears a tiny, plain white dress that seems to be currently serving mostly to absorb tears than to cover a body. She is so absorbed in her sorrow that Xion’s somber, empathetic stare doesn’t catch a speck of her attention.

Xion opens the cell with great caution. “Hey,” she says, softly.

The girl looks up for the first time. She is visibly very young, her large eyes and round face still reflecting the features of a child. She does not respond to Xion’s greeting. Instead, she recoils again, slowly, but desperately trying to crawl even deeper into the corner to which she already occupied.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” Xion makes a reassuring hand gesture before kneeling down at the cell door to look at the girl from eye-level.

The girl musters up her first sentence. “I haven’t seen y-you before…” she stammers.

“Because I’ve never been here before,” Xion says. She moves closer, ever so slowly as to not frighten the girl. “What’s your name?” Xion asks.

The girl blinks blankly at Xion and wipes away a tear. She makes an attempt to stand up, and succeeds with mild difficulty. She seems to have decided Xion is at least temporarily truthful in her claim of doing no harm. She gulps, nervously, possibly in an attempt to control her nerves. “My name is Naminé,” she says, finally responding to the query.

This was not just a girl. This had to have been _the girl_. She had to have been the special nobody Marluxia was talking about in the reports from earlier. _There’s no way she was a threat to them on her own,_ Xion inferred. There must have been something very special about her indeed. Xion moves inside the cell. “I’m going to close the door so they don’t see us from the entrance, okay?” Xion asks. She takes Naminé’s nod as an approval, and Xion closes the door.

With the two alone now, Naminé asks a question of her own. “What’s _your_ name?” she asks, finally appearing to calm her previous unrelenting torrent of tears.

“My name is Xion,” Xion responds.

Naminé looks to Xion, closely examining her for any sign of her stated intentions being false. She doesn’t appear to find any. “Why are you here?” she asks.

“I’m here to… well, er…” Xion trails off for a moment. Why _was_ she here? To find answers, one could suppose, but she wasn’t quite sure what answers she was looking for. At the very least, she was sure she hadn’t found them yet. That said, Xion had just met this girl; How could she adequately explain her complex motivations in a timely manner? Did Naminé even know what nobodies were, or that she was one? There were simply too many questions - and with the Organization members liable to return at any moment - not enough time.

Naminé takes Xion’s slow response as reason to worry. She steps back once more, her suspicions raised again.

“No, no, I’m not lying, it’s just… it’s complicated,” Xion says, once again making a reassuring hand motion. “I guess I was here to find some… information I needed. And, I guess… I was here to save you. I’m not with them, I promise.”

Naminé, once again, has her suspicions raised ever higher. “Th-then why are you wearing that?” she asks, accusingly.

“Wearing what?” Xion asks, before looking at herself. “Oh.”

The black coats were a uniform, after all. Xion usually barely seemed to notice given how few people she saw not wearing them on the average day.

“Okay, well… I am _with_ them, but I don’t want to be. Not anymore.” Xion moves a few inches closer. “I didn’t come here to save you, but you seem like you don’t want to be here, right?” Xion says.

Naminé nods.

Xion holds out her hand. “Then come with me, and I’ll get you out of here.”

Naminé profusely shakes her head. “But… I can’t leave yet!” she hysterically exclaims, loud enough to make even herself jump.

Xion appears to be deeply confused by her denial. “Why not?” she asks.

Naminé appears to realize her nerves are far out of control and begins to breathe deeply. She loses eye contact with Xion and slumps against the wall behind her. It looked as if whatever she had to say, it was going to be rather long-winded. Xion sat down too, as to not to dwarf Naminé’s small figure with her much larger coat.

Naminé, calmer now, begins her explanation. “I can’t leave because they’re going to hurt _him_.”

“Sora, you mean?” Xion asks.

Naminé looks back up at Xion again. “How did you know?”

Xion chuckles, out of nervousness more than amusement. “I’ve… seen him before. Some documents I read earlier talked about him.” She elects not to talk about the dreams.

Xion makes a quick glance into the cell door to check for incoming intruders before continuing. “What do you have to do with him?” Xion asks.

Naminé lets out a particularly guilty sigh before responding. “They make me change his memories. They force me to make him remember things that never happened.” Naminé pauses for a moment, her guilt appearing to reach a climax. “They force me to make him… remember me.” A tear escapes her eye, one that she is quicker to wipe away this time.

Xion edges closer to Naminé, clutching her right hand to comfort her. “Did you… know him, before they got him?” she asks.

Naminé stays silent for a moment, but then, with her left hand, she slams the wall behind her in a combination of despair and frustration. “No!” she yells. “I’ve never seen him before! I don’t remember anything about him! I don’t remember anything about me! I don’t remember… I don’t remember anything!” She continues, her voice and body growing shakier. “I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know why he’s here…” she says, her torrent of tears returning once again. “I don’t know why I care about him so much, and I don’t know why it hurts so much to hurt him…”

Something clicks in Xion’s head. The gap between Marluxia’s messages mentioning Naminé and Sora were dated months apart. Months that Naminé must have been sitting here, ordered to callously distort and destroy the consciousness of another person that she felt she loved, without an explanation or a reason, other than the death she was no doubt threatened with. If Xion didn’t receive a straight answer for anything, she couldn’t have imagined the relative darkness Naminé must have been living in for weeks upon weeks, treated like a tool be used and an animal to be caged.

Xion moves to hug Naminé in a sympathetic embrace, giving her what might have been the only gesture of kindness Naminé has received for possibly her entire life. The two sit there for a few minutes without exchanging words, likely because the suffering that Naminé must have endured must have been well beyond words. Xion pulls Naminé to her level and looks her in the eyes.

“They are going to pay for what they’ve done to you, okay?” Xion says, with utmost determination. “And if I can’t do it, then someone else will. I promise.”

Naminé nods slowly, before burying her face into Xion’s shoulder. “I just don’t want to hurt anybody…” she says, desperately trying to stop her stream of tears.

Xion pulls Naminé to her feet. “I’ll save you both, then. I’ll get both of you out of here if you can just bring me to him.” Xion puts her hands on Naminé’s shoulders. “Can you do that?”

Naminé nods. She moves to wipe away the rest of her tears, but to her surprise, Xion does it for her.

“You’re going to be okay,” Xion says, smiling for the first time since she spoke to Roxas that morning.

Naminé looks at Xion with a feeling of joy she’s never felt in her heart before. “Thank you,” she says, smiling for the first time.

\---

The two make their way out of the prison block. The way to Sora’s location is, like Xion expected, behind the door she chose not to go through at the crossroads earlier. Xion frantically is checking behind them the whole journey, remembering to punctually close doors in their wake and ensure there are no threats lying ahead. Xion wasn’t quite sure what Organization members she could take on her own, but realistically, she presumed there weren’t too many.

On the way, the two explain their respective situations. Xion tells Naminé of Roxas, the Organization, and her frustrations. Naminé tells Xion of her life under the watchful eye of Marluxia and his henchmen, a description that horrifies Xion. Naminé had been neglected at most, and in cases like Larxene, actively abused at worst. In her few months of existence, Xion was the first to show her any ounce of compassion. That notion shook Xion to the core and fueled her hate for the Organization even further.

The duo arrived at the final staircase before their destination. It was unsurprisingly the longest. Naminé, in a striking change of pace, begins sprinting downwards, with Xion being the one having to keep up. As they reach the bottom, the boy of the hour sits at the center of the room in all his glory. He is clad in an outfit of red and blue, with inordinately large yellow shoes and brown, spiky hair. Naminé is already in front of the capsule as Xion arrives. The look on her face is indisputably one partly of guilt, but the other part is just as obviously made of love. If Xion didn’t know better, she would have presumed Naminé had known Sora for her whole life. Perhaps she did, and for one reason or another, just didn’t remember.

“Do you know how to open the capsule?” Xion asks.

Naminé seemed almost hypnotically distracted by Sora’s floating body in the capsule, and quickly snaps out of her trace to respond to Xion. “O-oh… uh, I’m actually not sure…” she says. “I didn’t see them put him in, and they never took him out before…”

Xion moves to examine the capsule herself. There isn’t a button or input console to open the capsule on any side of it. Xion thinks for a moment, and then decides to try her wonderfully oversized key once again. She summons it, and it’s sudden appearance and noise makes Naminé jump backwards. “It’s okay,” Xion says, chuckling a bit. Xion fires a beam from her keyblade at the capsule.

It doesn’t budge.

Xion taps the capsule instead, like she did to the cell door earlier. It, again, doesn’t budge.

Naminé’s expression looks to be quickly turning into a frown. Xion realizes that the same is happening to her own. Thusly, she takes a page from Roxas and tries his favorite approach to solving problems instead:

Brute force.

Xion winds up, and gives the glass side of a capsule an extremely hard whack. Naminé jumps again, edging closer to the corner. The capsule visibly cracks.

“Careful not to hurt him!” Naminé exclaims.

“Don’t worry,” Xion says, hitting the capsule again. And then again, until it’s cracks begin to spread on their own, and a large shatter is heard. Some sort of clear liquid comes spilling out of it, becoming a watery wave that Xion only just manages to avoid and Naminé has retreated in the corner to do the same. With it, Sora’s body comes tumbling out the capsule as well, landing straight onto his face. It was certain he wasn’t conscious at this point. If he was, there would have certainly been an audible scream.

 

Naminé rushes to Sora’s body as it hits the ground, worriedly checking for any injuries. Considering the boy had been through worse, he looked as if he was going to be fine. The two pull away from the gooey preservation fluid that lies splattered onto the floor. “Are you ready to go now?” Xion asks, preparing to conjure a corridor.

But an unknown voice replies before Naminé can answer.

“Ready to go where, exactly, dear number fourteen?” Marluxia asked, sitting at the bottom of the staircase the girls used to enter.

Naminé froze, paralyzed in unthinkable fear. But Xion, for all the fear she had prior to coming here, looked Marluxia defiantly in the eyes. She had come too far to stop now, and now that she was fighting for _someone else,_ she had much less room to worry for herself. “I’m taking them far away from you,” Xion retorted.

Marluxia is caught off guard by Xion’s strength. “They told me you were the docile one, you know. That your little boyfriend was supposed to be the rambunctious delinquent.” Marluxia moves off of the staircase, prompting Xion to draw her keyblade. “Listen, Xion,” he says. “Despite what you might think, the boss doesn’t hand out death penalties for every crime. Your punishment for this stunt will be severe, yes, but you’ll get to live on. You’ll see your little friends again. But if you so much as put that thing within a two foot radius of me, I will take it upon myself to be your executioner, little girl. I hope you understand that.”

Xion refuses to budge. Naminé clutches Sora’s lifeless body in fear. Marluxia continues to edge closer to them, summoning his scythe as he walks forward. Xion’s mind races to find her next course of action. Bombastic, unruly magic was not an option, as the risk of harming Naminé was too great. Marluxia’s scythe was big enough to beat her out in terms of range, so a direct sword clash was not at all a good course of action either.

Marluxia took another step forward. As he did, Xion rushed at him, keyblade held high. Marluxia chuckled briefly, and expecting an attack, prepared to block accordingly. But he falls for the bait. Xion dashes right past him without striking at all, and Marluxia makes a wild swipe for her as she narrowly escapes his grasp. He misses, and just as he’s vulnerable, Xion points her keyblade at him, and from it erupts a large blizzaga burst, one large enough to knock Marluxia across the room, flying right into the broken capsule Sora was once lying in just a minute earlier, stunning him momentarily. “Run!” Xion yells to Naminé, as she frantically scrambles to pry open a corridor behind Naminé and Sora.

Naminé heeds Xion’s command, rushing towards the corridor Xion opened near her. Marluxia, enraged, attempts to shrug off the sluggishness brought on by the frost that enveloped him, and tries to stop Naminé from entering the corridor. Xion rushes towards Marluxia in an attempt to save her. As she runs, Marluxia hurls his scythe at Xion with great force, an attack she just manages to sidestep. The scythe returns to him like a boomerang, as he leaps toward Xion with an overhead strike. He narrowly misses her, but to Naminé’s horror, he follows up with a swing to Xion’s side, and he hits. Her body is flung well across the room, and she lets out a shriek of indescribable pain.

Marluxia turns away from Xion to Naminé. He dashes toward her, in an attempt to grab her once again. She makes a completely futile attempt to struggle away, and she is forcefully dragged away with Marluxia’s left hand. Right before he manages to grab Sora as well, Xion hurls her keyblade at Marluxia’s head and hits manages to at least hit his upper body. He, too, recoils back in pain, letting Naminé go, and allowing her to scramble to grab Sora and inch to the portal again.

Xion casts a quick cure, getting on her feet and rushes toward Marluxia in a last ditch attempt to buy Naminé her final bit of time. Marluxia swings his scythe to narrowly miss Xion’s face. The two exchange blows at close range, until Marluxia lands one decisive blow onto Xion’s stomach, sending her straight into a ground with a second, louder scream. Naminé is desperately dragging Sora into the portal, but is unable to take her horrified eyes off of Xion as she does so. Marluxia brings a boot to Xion’s stomach with great force, and a very loud, audible cracking noise is heard, no doubt negating the effects of the cure she lasted earlier.

Xion’s vision is a collection of blurs, and her ears hear only a cacophony of Naminé’s screams and  Marluxia’s yelling. Her attempt to whack his boot away with her keyblade fails miserably, as he knocks the blade out of her hand, with her being in no shape to resummon it.

Naminé is almost through the portal completely, crying uncontrollably as she watches Xion’s merciless beating. Marluxia’s temper reaches a climax as he takes Xion by the hair and flings her body across the room to the opposite wall, before dashing toward the corridor in a futile attempt to stop Naminé and Sora. He is too late. The two escape through and the corridor fades. He shouts a profanity as the corridor dissipates. Seething with rage, he then turns to Xion.

Life begins to slow down. Xion is completely paralyzed by pain. A rift forms between her mind and her body as she slowly becomes more and more detached from her senses. She thinks, for a moment, of the conversation she had with Roxas days prior. She wonders, that now the reaper in his black coat is slowly, angrily approaching, does she regret this?

The mission was a failure, by all accounts. She doesn’t know what she is, nor does she know why she is collecting hearts for the organization, nor does she know the true nature of the keyblade. Even those questions could have gone unanswered as long as she got the answer she truly longed for.

 _Do I have a heart?_ she thinks, one last time.

She knows nothing she truly wanted to know. And yet, seconds before the scythe would descend upon her, she feels no regret. She saved a person - two people - that were suffering, unfairly and unjustly, even worse than she was. Victimized by a monolithic organization with no regard for their wellbeing, made to live everyday like they were in hell, and controlled by “people” who deserved to be. Maybe, Xion thought, they would find the answers. Maybe she was never meant to be the revolutionary, but she would be satisfied being the first domino to fall. She believed in Naminé. But most importantly, she believed in Roxas.

She believed that when he learned what became of her, that he wouldn’t fall in line and accept what’s happened. He wouldn’t become a drone or a willing slave. She knew he would fight. She knew he would fight to the most bitter of ends, just like she did. She knew, most of all, that he would not stand for the execution of the girl he loved.

In her head, was the clock tower, one last time. The eternal dawn still hanging in the sky, with the trio looking upon it. No words. No noise, and not a single disturbance otherwise. And the eternal dawn would be her last thought, as Marluxia’s scythe brought a swift end to her brief life.

Her body faded away, dissipating into the darkness from which it was crafted. Marluxia had never seen a nobody die, but expected as such. But as he turned around and made his way up the staircase, he saw something he never could have possibly expected. For as he looked upon Xion’s body, he saw the answer she was searching her entire life for. The answer in question was what lied within her the whole time.

Because floating where the girl that was Xion used to be, was a single, shining heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit dissatisfied with this one. It was written piecemeal throughout the course of the last month or two. I feel it suffered because of it (not to mention Ao3's formatting from Google Docs is kind of garbage sometimes), but there were only so many times I could justify going back and changing individual lines here and there, so I had to move on at some point. I hope you guys enjoy it.


	3. Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kairi finds an old friend, Naminé finds a new "home", and Roxas finds the truth.

There was a night where there was a particularly beautiful image painted across the sky above Destiny Islands. It was the sort of starry night that warrants a pause to admire it, the kind that sends ignites the imagination of people with wonder and introspection. And perhaps Kairi would have agreed with that sentiment, were she not on a raft that seemingly nauseated her to the point where the starkness of the star’s light blended together in her eyes.

The trip to the miniature island was rarely ever so arduous. Kairi had only the faintest memories of what her life was like before the islands, but even in her early youth, she didn’t remember ever struggling this hard to keep her sea legs upright. The waters weren’t particularly tough either, and her raft - while still slightly battered as a result of a decade of youthful shenanigans - was typically sturdy enough to brave the journey. It was realizing these facts that drove Kairi to the conclusion her ailment had little to do with the particulars of the raft ride itself; it was instead the surrounding context that unsettled her so.

Kairi’s encounter with the crimson-haired man, now several weeks in the past, still shook her deeply. For an extended period of time, the most outlandish things that ever happened in her life were vague offers to consume questionable substances from seedy men in alleyways, or hearing some nonsensical obscenity yelled at the top of someone’s lungs in the market district. The standard deviation of strangeness and danger were very low in her day-to-day existence, and she hated that - or, at least she thought she did - but actually seeing something strange and dangerous shifted her mindset significantly. It was easy to say, she found, that she wanted a leading role in the wondrous adventures that, before, seemed to happen around her. But it is easy to forget that while normalcy might be repetitive, it is safe. Barring some particularly unlucky outliers, typically, a normal highschool life involves no agents of evil that try to wrest your soul from your body, or kill your friends, or force you through portals to the dark world. You get up every day with a schedule and can reasonably expect to return back to a warm home, food on the table, and with your biggest immediate threat being something as comparatively docile as a report card.

Kairi knew all of this. Infact, as the days went by, she began to look at her potential re-entry into the magical realm through a much more reluctant, fearful lens. It, of course, didn’t help that she was alone. All those she trusted enough to reveal this inner struggle to were gone off in some faraway land or another. But no matter how much the fearful half of her mind tried to pry her away from her endeavors, she still feverishly tried to re-summon her keyblade. She had no reason to believe that the ability to summon it would immediately lead her to some new adventure that she would have no choice but to embark on. Furthermore, she also had no reason to believe refusing to summon it again would result in her life continuing on unaffected by another inter-dimensional conflict.

Regardless, those facts ultimately didn’t matter, because the choice, in Kairi’s head, felt monumental. Continuing on this crusade she was on to try to conjure the keyblade would mean she was accepting her inevitable role in whatever conflict she was going to be swept up in. Stopping, and running away from it, would mean she was actively rejecting her unrequested mantle in the interest of living her life without the strife that comes with chaos and adventure. The choice might not have done anything to affect the world’s outcome, but to Kairi, it was a decision about how she wanted the rest of her life to be.

And the choice that she made, conscious or not, was reflected by her decision to return to the miniature island. She had chosen to continue on this crusade. She had embarked on this sickening raft ride and endured the biting cold of a nighttime Destiny Islands sea to come to the place where the mysterious weapon had appeared the first time. Perhaps, she thought, coming to the place the incident first took place would pry the strong feelings and memories she had during it to the surface once more, and allow her to use them to beckon the keyblade again. It was a place to start, and it was about the only one she had at the moment.

Upon her arrival at the shore, Kairi took a few moments to detach herself from the mast of the raft, as she had spent the last thirty minutes desperately clinging to it for some semblance of stability on the sea. After doing so, she took no time to immediately lay down on the sand to take a moment of rest. She could see where the crimson-haired man had appeared from the point she was laying. The short, thirty second walk up two small sections of shakey wooden stairs between her and the aforementioned point seemed like a distance that was light years in length. In contrast to the quiet ambience that comprised her external surroundings, Kairi’s internal landscape was a chaotic amalgamation of raging winds and burning heat, with her standing in the middle of a vortex of uncertainty. The rational part of her mind, the part that understood that there was no choice being made, the part that understood that she still had every opportunity to back out of this - whether she tried to re-summon the keyblade or not - was inactive, or rather, being strangled by its emotional counterpart. The demon tucked away in her mind screamed in terror. “He’ll take you,” it seemed to say. “You’ll be taken and this nice little life of yours will never be the same.”

And yet, even with the constricting influence of every chain of fear and unease keeping her in bondage, she stood from the sand. She made the march, ever so slowly, to the platform where all the chaos started. Not even just her encounter with her assailant just a few weeks prior, but the true inciting event: the last moment she saw Sora before she was abducted, now almost an entire year ago.

She had arrived. She was prepared to try. And she did.

And she did again.

And she did again.

And it seemed that nothing was happening.

Quite an anti-climax, she thought. All this fret and she never stopped to think about how exactly she planned to recall the weapon, if she made the momentous decision to do so. After all the melodrama, she felt a bit silly - or perhaps a bit crazy - standing alone on an island in the middle of the night, squeezing her eyes closed and making grunting noises to herself in an attempt to make a magic key appear from the sky.

She had a rough night, she figured. It was probably best that she went back to the residential island and stopped fretting so much about this imaginary choice that seemed to absorb her thoughts every hour of every day. And so, she turned around and began her leave when she saw a man in a black coat walking toward her.

“I checked at your house, and you weren’t there,” the figure said. “I figured you would have come here.”

Kairi could not believe her eyes. The exact moment clarity returned to her mind was also the exact moment all her paranoia was validated. A man standing before her in the exact same black coat as the man who ambushed her. Surely, she thought, it was the same person. He had returned; perhaps he had changed his mind about what he had said, or perhaps he was lying from the start. Either way, she was here, keyblade-less and feckless, completely unable to fend off any attack or abduction that may come her way.

That was, at least, until the figure removed his hood, and revealed his silver hair and stark blue eyes.

* * *

It is a curse, Naminé thought, that your mind preserves memories with the greatest suffering with the greatest detail. With unparallelled clarity of vision and sound, she could - and did, to her dismay - replay Xion’s final moments of suffering in her head for an eternity. And in a cold, lonely forest, with only a corpse for company, there was little else to lead her mind away from the darkness that engulfed it.

Her physical body, however, was quite occupied. Almost entirely occupied, at that. Naminé had a great many admirable characteristics, but strength of form was not one of them, and both Sora’s body and his superfluous attire weighed her down immensely. It would take forever, she thought, to get where they were trying to go. However, it would take even longer to figure out where they were going at all.

Xion, in the chaos, was unable to provide a direction. She had seemed like she knew where she was going, and presumably her intended destination for Naminé was where the corridor led. That said, a cursory analysis of the surrounding area showed nothing of note but trees. This especially worried Naminé, as it seemed to be getting quite dark out. Of course, the world she was in was always perpetually “getting quite dark out”, but she was unaware of this fact. Perhaps that was for the better; the fear of having to traverse the dark forest alone forced her into action.

After about an hour, said action led her to the gate of an old mansion. The large structure certainly seemed intimidating and vaguely evil, but it was also the first structure Naminé had encountered up to this point. The gate was already open upon her arrival, and the door beyond it was cracked open. She sat for a while, contemplating whether she should enter. On one hand, she hated being outside. On the other, she had no guarantee that she would be able to leave if she did enter, or if the mansion itself was occupied. It certainly appeared to be abandoned and in disrepair, but Naminé was the last person to even begin to consider breaking into a house that someone actually lived in.

None of this contemplation mattered, though, because three monstrosities materialized behind her that made her decision for her. They were horrifying, unnatural creatures with limbs that quickly shifted back and forth as if they were elastic, and grey, empty voids for faces. Atop their heads lied an ominous emblem fit for a band of cultists, and the shifting, unpredictable nature of their movement made them even more terrifying to contend with. And so, Naminé made absolutely no effort to contend with them, instead hoisting Sora up with a newfound strength produced by fear-induced adrenaline, and lugged him as fast as she could up the mansion’s stairs and into the open door, slamming it shut behind her.

She immediately scrambled to move every object she could in front of the door to prevent the monsters from breaching inside. Tables, chairs, and every loose ornament in the mansion foyer were all hoisted in front of the door in an attempt to thwart the ever-increasing progress of the beasts. Once she had blocked the door with everything she could find, she took Sora and dashed as deep into the mansion as she could, wishing to gain nothing but distance from the door. She foundherself in the Library, where she once again shuts the door. Seeing nowhere left to run, Naminé finally resigns to sit and rest on the ground, presuming that if her current defensive measures failed, she was done for anyway. She did not calm down, necessarily, but she had little more energy for resistance.

And so, she sat, now still in a building that felt like an eerie, ornate prison. It seemed that she was so fearful of the monsters that attacked her prior that, until this moment, she hadn’t noticed how unsettling the interior of the mansion actually was. Surely, it was the setting of many a local ghost story, with its apparent desertion and dismal condition. The building itself resembled a dead husk of something that once was, as if time had slowly sucked its soul away.

The silence and relative tranquility in the room gave Naminé a moment to think, and thinking was not something she wanted to do. Thought gave her mind freedom to remember, and though Naminé did not have a very long life to remember, she had very few - if any - memories that she felt were worth remembering. Of course, once one has consciously tried to stop thinking about something, the battle has already been lost, and the floodgates of Naminé’s memory let loose a barrage of negative thoughts.

It had occurred to her that Xion had been her only friend. She loved Sora, but she still hadn’t a clue why, and she had more than a sneaking suspicion that Sora would not take kindly to her if he knew that she was fabricating his memories. In contrast, Xion cared about her for seemingly no reason at all. She recalled the moment where Xion wiped the tear from her face, and told her it was “going to be okay”. From that moment onward, for the brief adventure they would have before Xion’s death, Naminé had the only moment of solace and caring that she has ever had. And even this was not afforded to her for a period of time any longer than an hour.

Naminé felt an emotion that she hadn’t ever felt before. It was something vaguely like anger, but perhaps closer to frustration. She had asked very few questions of anyone or anything in her short life, but the one question she wanted to ask the most was _why._ Why, exactly, had she been placed in this position? Why had she been placed in this world seemingly only to be the instrument of monsters? She wished, sometimes, that she was simply a mindless doll. If her only purpose was to be a tool, she thought, it would be better for her to not have the faculties of mind to yearn to achieve, love, or _live_ , for having those desires would simply give one a reason to suffer.

Naminé sat still, clutching Sora’s body in her arms. She was so paralyzed by introspection that it was quite the miracle she noticed the relatively faint noises that began to come from beneath the floor. Their rhythm resembled footsteps; whether they were human or monstrous remained to be seen. Naminé still did not move. She _was_ scared, but there was essentially nowhere else to run, so if the owner of the footsteps was hostile, there was little she could do.

From the other end of the library, the floor began to shift to reveal a room below. The mechanism that was moving the floor sounded just about as ancient as the rest of the mansion, as it produced a metallic screech that sounded more like a dying animal than a machine. Regardless, the false floor finally opened, revealing a staircase to a room that looked far, far more modern than anything in the rest of the mansion, and a man.

Naminé said nothing. The man appeared intensely intimidating. He eyed her for a moment.

“And for once, fate works in our favor,” he says.

His head was obscured by rouge-colored wrappings and _belts_ , of all things, coupled with a litany of pouches and compartments on his robe, topped off with a cape that stopped just before the bottom of his feet. The belts wrapping around his visage obscured half of his face, leaving just one unnerving, orange eye, the primary use of which seemed to unsettle rather than see, if the look he was giving Naminé was any indication.

“Come now. Bring the boy,” he said, bluntly, beginning his way back down into the hidden chamber. Astonishingly, he seemed to presume Naminé would follow his order without further questioning. She did not, of course, leading him to stop and glare at her once again.

“I know you don’t trust me, girl, and frankly, I don’t care,” he snapped. “Even if my intentions were dark - and they aren’t - your only choices would be to come with me or be thrown back outside so you can face the Dusks again. Now come - and quickly - for that boy of yours is in desperate need of aid.”

Sora’s wellbeing proved to be a convincing enough reason for Naminé to follow. The man offered no aid bringing Sora down the stairs, leaving Naminé to awkwardly have to lug him down herself. Upon reaching the bottom, she slowed to marvel at the technological wonderland that laid before her. The chamber beneath the ground hid metallic walls lined with futuristic lights, complex machinery, and an enormous computer on the opposite wall. Compared to the seemingly ancient architecture that sat atop it, the secret chamber looked as if it was something from the far future. A tunnel entrance sat near the computer on the opposite wall, and Naminé began to march inside, Sora’s body in hand.

The end of the tunnel introduced Naminé to an entirely different sort of architecture, still. This time, the room the tunnel led was a cylindrical one of stark white, one that uncomfortably reminded her of the Organization halls. At the center, sat something that appeared to be a stasis pod, yet styled to look something like a white flower. And, to its immediate right, was the man, impatiently waiting for Naminé’s arrival.

“Put him close to it. The pod will do the rest,” the man says. Naminé complies, resting Sora near the pod’s edge. Confirming the man’s theory, the pod does indeed absorb Sora’s body, telekinetically pulling his body inside.

“Where is he going?” Naminé asks.

“Nowhere,” the man says, seemingly annoyed that Naminé would ask such a question. “He’s staying in there for his protection while we find his other half, and while we fix what _you_ did to him.”

The man’s statement shoots a surge of fear and guilt through Naminé’s body heretofore unmatched in intensity by any emotion she has ever felt. She stands, stunned, unable to reply to the man’s accusation, and unable to ask how he knew what he knew in the first place. The man continues.

“My name is DiZ,” he says. “You’re going to stay here and repair his mind while me and my allies focus on repairing his body. I know you have questions, and I will give you only the answers you absolutely need to know.” DiZ turns to Naminé and narrows his gaze. “Do not think me a fool, girl.”

He moves in closer to her, and leans in. “I know what you are. You are just as internally hollow as the rest of those cloaked lunatics, and I will treat you as such. Do not bring harm to this boy or deceive me otherwise.” DiZ moves toward the tunnel doorway, starting to leave. “Were it up to me, I would have left you to the dusks. Remember that.”

And so, just like that, DiZ makes his departure. Left alone in the white room, with only Sora to gaze at, Naminé is unable to escape the feeling that she has entered yet another prison.

* * *

No banter followed Roxas and Axel as they made their way to and up the Clock Tower this day, as had been the case for several days prior. Silence, instead, made their acquaintance, as it was difficult to be terribly jubilant about much of anything given that it felt that they were only two-thirds of their complete self.

Xion was still missing, and the search for her had not yielded any significant progress since she had first disappeared. The Organization had held a brief meeting about the incident, but evidently, Roxas and Axel are the only members who seemed to care at all what happened to her. Larxene almost seemed pleased about the development, a fact that would have made Roxas assault her outright were it not for Axel’s intervention. The higher-ups had made no statements since about her whereabouts, and have continued to claim ignorance of any of the details of her vanishing. Roxas, at least, suspected that they were being disingenuous, if not outright lying. He had kept his theories to himself, but he had his own ideas as to what _really_ happened. His chief suspicion is that Xion had saw something in the Archives that she shouldn’t have, and that she subsequently departed in order to keep him and Axel safe.

Roxas’ skepticism did not appear to be lost on Axel. When they would talk about where to look for her - as they were going to do today - there was always a clear sense of dissatisfaction with how the Organization was handling the situation and how transparent they were about the whole affair. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” Roxas put it as he and Axel reach the top of the Clock Tower. “There's no way they would let one of their supposedly ‘most important’ members just disappear without a trace.”

“It seems there is a way, because it’s happened,” Axel replies. “Despite what you might believe, they’re not a terribly organized organization. I’m angry too, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”

Axel’s response was devoid of emotion, delivered in a bland, empty tone. It was apparent that something - presumably the fruitless search for Xion - had drained the life out of him at quite an alarming rate. This, too, annoyed Roxas, though he had not yet informed Axel that it did. Axel was still an active participant in the search, and he still seemed diligent in his efforts, but it appeared that he - strangely, considering his elemental inclinations - had no fire in his heart compelling him to continue. It seemed almost as if he carried on with the exercise to please Roxas, and would have given up on the effort otherwise. Roxas increasingly felt, as time passed, that Axel did not care as much about the search as he did.

Which, to be fair, it would have been difficult for Axel to do. For Roxas, the search for Xion had become nearly all-consuming. Every hour of his day and part of his mind seemed singularly dedicated to it. From dawn to dusk, he searched through the deepest corners of the worlds they had traveled, as well as the memories they had made, trying to think of the place that she would go if she needed to leave, or trying to think of a place the Organization would take her, in the increasingly plausible situation that they were the ones responsible for her disappearance. However hard he meditated on the issue, though, and no matter how thoroughly he searched the worlds - Agrabah, Neverland, and Twilight Town among them - he yielded no results.

And such, he and Axel sat atop the clock tower again, after yet another day of pointless futility.

“I’m going back to the Castle,” Axel said. “I think it’s about time we wrap it up for today.”

“You do that,” Roxas replied. “I’m not done yet.”

Axel sighed. “What else do you plan to do? There’s nothing else for us here, kiddo. We really ought to go back.”

Roxas paused just long enough for it to be notable. “I have some ideas. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be ok.”

For the first time in recent weeks, an emotion flashed across Axel’s face. Worry. Nonetheless, he knew better than to stop Roxas from doing whatever he was planning on doing at this point, so he resolved instead to leave. “Just stay safe,” Axel said, beginning to make his way off the tower.

Roxas didn’t respond. Partly because it didn’t seem like he needed to, but partly because he knew what he was about to do was _profoundly_ unsafe.

* * *

Typical of kids his age - Nobody or not - the primary subject of Roxas’ ire about the entire situation was himself. He was well aware Xion was too protective of him to demand he accompany her, wherever she went that fateful day a few weeks ago, but he knew he should have insisted regardless. They had confided in each other - not even Axel - about their mutual frustration regarding the nature of their existence and “employment”. It was a tender subject that gnawed at their hearts more than anyone else in the Organization, and if Xion aimed to get to the bottom of it, it should have been an instant decision for Roxas to join her.

More frustrating, he thought, was the fact that Roxas knew deep down what she was aiming to do. It was not as if his suspicions were vague. She had directly informed him of her plan to unravel the conspiracy that they suspected existed behind the nature of their purpose. “I’m saying we stop waiting for answers and find them ourselves,” she had said. What was that, if not a direct offer? One that - while he did not refuse it - he left sitting on the table, for that ever-present sense of fear and self-preservation kept him from taking it.

Even up to this very moment, as Roxas walked determinedly across the Castle halls, he had heretofore not looked in the one place he most suspected she’d be. The one place he had avoided, for even his desire to find her did not, on its own, overcome the fear of traveling there. The Castle Archives. And, by extension, whatever horrors laid inside.

Until tonight.

For tonight, Roxas had finally had enough. Truth lied in there, and whether the truth was ugly, scary, or deadly, he did not care. It is better, he thought, to be sickened by the answers than have your mind perpetually consumed by the questions. And as he thought this, he was prompted with yet another question.

“Why are you standing here?” Roxas asked to Axel, who was worriedly lingering by the Archives door.

“Why are you coming here?” Axel replied.

It seemed the two were at a standstill. Of course, both knew the answer to each respective question, but they at first wanted to hear each other’s mutual excuses. After a brief period of silence, Axel does away with the charade.

“I’m trying to keep you from making a mistake,” he says, nervously. It was unusual - and in fact, quite alarming - to see Axel nervous. His persona and ego were entirely constructed around a lackadaisical sense of fearlessness, and to see it falter was typically a sign of a grave problem.

“I think you’re trying to get me to make a mistake,” Roxas replies, sharply. “Let me through. Come with me. I didn’t ask you earlier because I knew you’d protest, but we’re here now, and-”

“Listen to me, Roxas,” Axel interrupts. “We can keep looking. But not here. It’s not worth having Xemnas beat you within an inch of your life because you went to the forbidden section of some boring library.” Axel stressed the “boring” so much that it became very clear that the library was anything but.

“Finding her is absolutely worth that.”

“You don’t even know she’s in there!”

“ _Looking_ for her is absolutely worth that,” Roxas said, with such a sternness of tone and firmness of spirit that it surprised even himself. “It’s worth a million beatings. It’s worth it if he takes the last inch of my life too. I don’t care. And if you don’t care about her as much, fine. But I am going in those Archives, regardless of whether I come out.”

Roxas’ statement sounded accusatory. There had been a noticeable distance between Roxas and Axel compared to Roxas and Xion, but this was the first time said distance had been directly addressed by any member of the trio. Part of it was natural; Axel was older by a non-trivial number of years, and he did not have the “keyblade wielder” moniker to relate to the other two. That said, Roxas’ reply still felt incredibly cutting, and it almost visibly chipped a bit of Axel’s soul away.

Axel’s rapidly deteriorating emotional state did not help the fact that he had very few negotiation cards in his deck left to get Roxas to turn back. “Xion wouldn’t want you to do risk this for her,” Axel said. “She would-”

“I know she wouldn’t want it,” Roxas snapped back. Axel clearly struck a nerve. “She wouldn’t want me to do much of anything for her even though she’d give everything for me because she is the greatest person I have ever met. I don’t care if she would _want_ me to do this. But she deserves this. She’s the only one who I know that I can truly, honestly trust.” Roxas clenched his fists, rapidly strengthening his resolve. “I can’t trust you, like I can her. You’re still one of them, in my eyes. You always have been. The only difference between you and Larxene is that you _know_ we’re all just tools, and you feel bad about it. But that doesn’t stop you from continuing to go on like it’s nothing. It doesn’t stop you from continuing to hide things from us, and…” Roxas’ tone quickly escalates into a yell. “It doesn’t stop you from trying to hide the skeletons in their closet, either! It doesn’t stop you from being so afraid that you’d rather eat the dirt off of Xemnas’ boot than dare ask if maybe we’ve been lied to!”

Every fiber in Axel’s being wants to respond, but he still finds himself powerless to retaliate against accusations he knows are true.

“I’m not a puppet!” Roxas yells. “When we have those times atop the clock tower laughing and eating ice cream, I _feel_ something. When me and her used to laugh and play on our way back from missions, and I do that stupid thing I always do where I get distracted by her eyes, I _feel_ something. When you stand between me and the one chance I have to really know what happened to her and stop waking up _every day_ hoping that the last few weeks were some prolonged nightmare, and that she’ll be there waiting for me in the gray room like she always is, only to go there and see that she’s nowhere to be found, I _feel_ something! I _feel_ angrier than I have ever been in my life, and I feel like I am going in that door, and I will force my way through if I have to!”

It is this final declaration that shatters the already crumbling castle that was concealing Axel’s greatest lie. He looks as if the very fabric of his heart has collapsed and that his world is falling apart before his eyes. Finally, after nearly an entire month of trying to persevere, he breaks.

“She’s dead,” he says, holding back a river of tears.

“What?” Roxas responds, not quite registering what was said.

“They told me two weeks ago,” Axel says. “She had found something in the Archives, and then she went to Castle Oblivion. She had rescued a girl there, and then Marluxia had killed her. She’s dead.”

* * *

Xemnas always seemed to want to discuss the more sensitive organization business in the dead of night, a policy that most of the higher-ups - Saïx included - saw as a thematic, rather than practical choice. He could never do them in a place that was remotely close to any of their quarters, either. Instead of using the customary meeting destination, the Round Room, Xemnas always called for the secret gatherings in a room in the depths of the castle, past all manner of superfluous chambers and contraptions and through several sets of needlessly elaborate doors.

But more annoying than all that, Saïx thought, was having to idly deal with Xigbar’s banter on the way back.

“So, whaddya think about these rumors about Marluxia’s shenanigans going around? The boss seems to not know about them. He hasn’t brought them up yet,” Xigbar said.

Saïx, knowing very well that the Boss did in fact know about them, feigned ignorance. “I don’t know, and until we have solid evidence, I don’t care. We haven’t time for gossip.”

Saïx sincerely wished this was the end of the conversation, but Xigbar found a sadistic joy in forcing Saïx to make conversation when he clearly wanted to be left alone. “Come on, though. If anybody was going to be planning anything sneaky, it’s gonna be Marluxia. Leaving him alone to his own devices over there was a bad idea. The fact that he’s got his own castle probably has gone to his head, don’t you think?”

“Maybe.”

“Come on, man, the world doesn’t deal in _maybe_. What if it really is somethin’, and we’re just sitting over here getting played while he…” Xigbar chuckles, briefly, before putting on a sarcastically dramatic voice. “While he gets ready to take the throne!”

“If it’s something, he’ll die. If it’s not, we carry on. He is no match for Xemnas, and he’s no match for me.”

“You’re never any fun,” Xigbar says, finally ending his attempt to push Saïx’s buttons.

To Saïx’s pleasure, the point where his and Xigbar’s path diverged was fast approaching, and he was soon able to leave him to be alone for the remainder of his journey. And finally, he was given some peace and quiet - at least momentarily.

The castle was, after all, a quiet place, most of the time. It was this fact that made Saïx take note when, halfway to his chambers, he heard screaming so intense in its fervor and suffering that it shook something even in his largely desensitized soul. As he traveled the halls to find its source, it became louder and louder, fading in and out from something resembling a war cry to uncontrollable wailing. As he got closer, it became punctuated regularly with a rhythm of blunt thunks and clanks, and the occasional violent snapping noise. But as Saïx neared his destination, it stopped. All noise ceased, leaving only an empty sonic atmosphere that was almost more alarming than the screaming that preceded it.

Nowhere near as alarming, though, as the barely-moving body Saïx saw in front of the Archives door, beaten so handily that it was difficult to even discern if there was any unbruised skin left on him.

But even with only a single glance at Axel’s visage, Saïx knew that the blood spilled upon the Castle floor today was only a fraction of what was to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goddamn. It's been eight months, by my count, since I published chapter II. I didn't just forget about this, but circumstances (see: school and new projects) made it difficult for me to consistently dedicate some time to getting this done, until now. Given the ridiculous amount of time this has taken, I hope you guys are satisfied with it. I'm mostly happy with how things came out, and I can promise that the next chapter will, at the very least, come out in less time than this one did.


End file.
